Part 76

Condemnable, condemned.

Jesus Christ never condemned without a bearing. To Judas: Amice, ad quid venisti? To him who had not on the wedding garment, the same.

Unless they give up probability their good maxims are as little holy as the bad. For they are founded on human authority, and thus if they are more just they will be more reasonable, but not more holy, they take after the wild stock on which they are graffed.

If what I say serves not to enlighten you, it will aid the people.--If these hold their peace, the stones will cry out.

Silence is the greatest persecution; the saints never held their peace. It is true that a vocation is needed, it is not from the decrees of the Council that we must learn whether we are called, but from the compulsion to speak. Now after Rome has spoken, and we think that she has condemned the truth, and they have written it, and the books which have said the contrary are censured; we must cry so much the louder the more unjustly we are censured, and the more violently they try to stifle speech, until there come a pope who listens to both sides, and who consults antiquity to do justice.

So good popes will find the Church still in an uproar.

The Inquisition and the Society are the two scourges of the truth.

Why do you not accuse them of Arianism? For if they have said that Jesus Christ is God, perhaps it is not with a natural meaning, but as it is said: Dii estis.

If my Letters are condemned at Rome, what I condemn in them is condemned in heaven.

Ad tuum, Domine Jesu, tribunal appello.

You are yourselves corruptible.

I feared that I had written ill when I saw myself condemned, but the example of so many pious writings makes me believe the contrary. Good writing is no longer permitted, so corrupt or ignorant is the Inquisition.

It is better to obey God than men.

I have neither fear nor hope. Not so the bishops. Port Royal fears, and it is a bad policy to dissolve the community, for they will fear no longer and will inspire greater fear.

I fear not even your censures, ... if they be not founded on those of tradition.

Do you censure all? What, even my respect?--No.--Say then, what it is, or you will do nothing, since you do not point out the evil, and why it is evil. And this is what they will have some trouble to do.

Unjust persecutors of those whom God visibly protects.

If they reproach you with your excesses they speak as do the heretics.

If they say that the grace of Jesus Christ separates us, they are heretics.

If miracles are wrought, it is the mark of their heresy.

Ezekiel,

They say, these are the people of God who thus speak.

Hezekiah,

My reverend father, all this was done in figures. Other religions perish, this one perishes not.

Miracles are more important than you think, they have served for the foundation, and will serve for the continuance of the Church till the coming of Antichrist, till the end.

The two witnesses.

In the Old Testament and the New, miracles are wrought in connection with types. Salvation or an useless thing, if not to show that we must submit to the creature.--Figure of the sacraments.

The synagogue was a figure and so it perished not, and it was only the figure and so it has perished. It was a figure which contained the truth, and so it subsisted till it contained the truth no longer.